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SymbianFoundation posts

Symbian Foundation teases augmented reality/social networking tool, says you'll probably never get it (video)

by Tim Stevens posted Nov 4th 2009 at 9:26AM

What do you do when everyone's talking about the competition's exciting new take on navigation? Why, you come up with your exciting new angle that's way cooler than theirs then sit back and guffaw while high-fiving your co-workers. That seems to be what Symbian Foundation is attempting here, with a teaser of a tool that would let you not only easily interact with Facebook events but also get real-time augmented reality navigation straight to them. It looks fancy enough, but there's a big catch: the company has no current plans of making it a reality, saying it's "not part of the Symbian UI Roadmap." Carry on, then, nothing to see after the break but a mobile Web 2.0 pipe dream.

[Via SlashGear]

Continue reading Symbian Foundation teases augmented reality/social networking tool, says you'll probably never get it (video)

Symbian looks to seduce iPhone devs with free Nokia 5800s, world destroying robo-duckie

by Paul Miller posted Jun 8th 2009 at 10:02PM

Sure, we feign a lack of bias, but deep down in our hearts we only have one love: Symbian Foundation's robo-duckie mascot. Unfortunately for Symbian, it's going to take all the charm it can muster to win over the iPhone App Store's crop of cash-flush developers. Symbian was apparently at WWDC today, doing its best to woo, with all-day festivities involving coffee, food, a "hackathon," prizes, and free Nokia 5800 handsets for attendees. We're expecting Ovi Store to fill in with some solid €1.00 beer drinking simulators and Zippo lighter apps any second now.

Sony Ericsson's Satio and Aino get handled, Remote Play makes the Aino PSP-like -- minus the games

by Chris Ziegler posted May 28th 2009 at 5:58PM

Folks are already starting to get a look at production versions (well, closer to production than at MWC, anyhow) of the Sony Ericsson Satio and its baby sister, the Aino -- and even if you're not a fan of the joint venture's wares, it's hard not to appreciate what it's brought to the table here. The Satio looks identical to its Idou doppelganger -- albeit now in three colors instead of two -- but the real news here is inside, where we're finally getting a look at Sony Ericsson's interpretation of Symbian^1 with a unique UI. Overall, it's looking "chunky" (and we mean that in a good way) with an entirely finger-friendly presentation -- a sharp, healthy departure from the UIQ platform that it just threw in the dumpster a few months back.

Though the Satio's higher end, it's actually the Aino that intrigues us more; in a way, this is the closest thing to a "PSP phone" that Sony Ericsson has ever produced, largely on account of its support for Sony Remote Play which funnels PlayStation 3-stored media content down over WiFi or your cellular connection. Sadly though, "media content" doesn't include games; Sony Ericsson is billing the phone strictly as a multimedia-heavy non-gaming phone, so calling it a PSP phone in practice would be a huge frickin' misnomer. The phone includes a dock that syncs media wirelessly to your PC when connected -- hot -- and from a distance, it seems to be just about the sexiest phone Sony Ericsson's ever made. It's not clear what carriers will be offering either of these, but as usual, we've got to bet against the North Americans.

Read - Satio hands-on
Read - Aino hands-on

Symbian Foundation boss talks up Symbian for netbooks, and more

by Donald Melanson posted May 20th 2009 at 9:02PM

We've already seen Symbian ported to an Atom-based PC for kicks, but it looks like Symbian Foundation boss Tim Holbrow already has some considerably grander plans, and says that we could actually see some Symbian-running netbooks in stores before too long. As TechRadar reports, when asked if we'll see Symbian netbooks on the market, Holbrow replied "I think so, yep," before intriguingly adding that he thinks the real question is "will netbooks carry on being netbooks?" Apparently, Holbrow sees netbooks becoming nothing more than a "single processor" that people carry around and use to access data from various sources -- letting folks use a wireless keyboard and display at home and have the UI adjust automatically, for instance, or what Holbrew calls "superconvergence." Of course, Holbrow isn't making any firm promises just yet, although he does say he can "see world in two or three years' time where mobile devices start to eat into the world of laptops and netbooks."

Symbian ports its platform to Atom, just for the heck of it

by Chris Ziegler posted Apr 16th 2009 at 1:08PM

Companies and enterprising individuals have been dabbling with the tantalizing concept of slapping Android on a cheap netbook for months now, and seeing how Android and Symbian could end up locked in a heated battle for the hearts and minds of the open-source mobile platform world, it stands to reason that the boys and girls at the Foundation would want to counter the OHA's every move. Some good people in the S60 On Symbian Customer Operations group (try fitting that on a business card) have managed to compile and run an S60-skinned Symbian build on one of Intel's Atom reference boards, showing a stock S60 screen and an OpenGL demo -- which, as you might imagine, runs circles around the performance of a garden-variety S60 handset. To quote the Foundation's boss, "I was most impressed with the responsiveness of the UI and upper application layers" -- the only question left to be answered is whether there's a place in the world for a Symbian-powered netbook.

Symbian Foundation's release schedule is a five-version juggling act

by Chris Ziegler posted Mar 13th 2009 at 5:07PM

The Symbian Foundation's platform plans have mostly been a black box since its inception last year, with S60 seemingly forming the de facto base for development -- a reality that ultimately accelerated UIQ's demise. Symbian executive VP David Wood has shed some light on how the roadmap's going to play out (in theory, anyway), and it's shaping up to be a little more complicated than anyone would've anticipated. Turns out that the Foundation intends to have no fewer than five -- yes, five -- versions of the platform in development at any one time: two in the "stable phase" where they'll presumably be subject to minor updates, one in the "hardening phase," one having new features submitted, and one getting very early builds. What's more, releases even beyond that will be getting their roadmaps finalized at the same time. Ultimately, they'd like to have two platform releases a year, with the first -- Symbian^2, based on the upcoming S60 5th Edition Feature Pack 1 -- hitting at the end of this year if everything goes well, and that's presumably what we'd be seeing in Sony Ericsson's Idou. Look, if Symbian seriously wants to innovate this rapidly and mercilessly, we're all for it -- it's just a question of whether it can deliver.

[Via All About Symbian, thanks Pdexter]

Nokia signs ?500 million loan for Symbian R&D

by Darren Murph posted Feb 19th 2009 at 9:54AM

You'd think a company like Nokia could just finance whatever it wanted, but just to be safe, it's signing a loan agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to the tune of €500 million ($623.9 million). Why the sudden need for cash? According to Reuters, the five-year loan will be used in part to "finance software research and development (R&D) projects Nokia is undertaking during 2009-2011 to make Symbian-based smartphones more competitive." More specifically, those R&D activities will "also benefit the work of the Symbian Foundation and its development of open-source software for mobile devices." Sadly, that's absolutely it for details, but we get the idea we'll be hearing more about this soon. We hear you can accomplish some pretty wild goals with a half billion Euros.

Nokia to shove Qualcomm MSM chipsets into future phones

by Darren Murph posted Feb 18th 2009 at 3:24AM

Nokia sure is doing a lot of hand shaking over in Barcelona, as shortly after it signed a gentlemanly agreement with Adobe, the Finnish handset maker has decided to equip some of its future devices with Qualcomm chipsets. Right now, details are somewhat vague, though we do know the two are hoping to "develop advanced UMTS mobile devices initially for North America." It's intended for these devices to be based on Symbian S60, and the chipsets involved will be the NFC-equipped Mobile Station Modem (MSM) line. Unfortunately, we aren't apt to actually see a handset emerge from this collaboration until mid-2010, though these devices will be compatible with the forthcoming Symbian Foundation platform. Teamwork, shrouded in mystery -- you guys sure know how to get attention.

[Via Slashgear]

Sony Ericsson Idou hands-on and video walkthrough

by Sean Cooper posted Feb 16th 2009 at 3:24PM

Sony Ericsson launched its 12.1 megapixel Idou at Mobile World Congress yesterday evening, and while not a finished device, we checked it out anyway. The Idou will eventually roll with the Symbian Foundation's OS, but the version we're seeing here is somewhere in between. The resistive touchscreen (essentially the same as found on the XpressMusic 5800) is immense, glossy, and already brilliant. The transitions and sweeping gestures (check them in the vid) are really responsive and quick, with no real lag. We checked it against its nearest neighbor in the C905 and it is slim in comparison. Top notch stuff, we are anxiously waiting for more. Video and gallery follow.

Gallery: Sony Ericsson Idou hands-on and video walkthrough

Continue reading Sony Ericsson Idou hands-on and video walkthrough

First Symbian Foundation handsets arriving in 2010

by Darren Murph posted Jun 24th 2008 at 6:09PM

Oh c'mon, you didn't think all these global players could just toss their eggs into one basket and pop out a new handset next week, did you? All sarcasm aside, those stoked about the possibilities of the newly formed Symbian Foundation will be waiting a good while before an actual handset is loosed on the world, or so Kai Öistämö says. Said exec has been quoted as saying that the first mobiles "bearing the new platform" wouldn't appear until 2010, which should be about the same time that the platform "has been fully open-sourced." For more of Öistämö's comments, head on down to the read link; for the nearest box of tissues... well, you're on the own there.